Here's a noble cause
even Republicans should recognize: The feds, on their way into your bedroom, want to stop
at the bathroom to make sure you don't flush your toilet or take a shower in a politically
incorrect way.

To quote Dave Barry, "I am not making this up." There's a
provision in the 1992 Energy Policy and Conservation Act requiring that new toilets
installed in your home be limited to 1.6 gallons of water per flush, that showers have a
flow rate of no more than 2.5 gallons per minute.

The idea is to save water, even in the places where there is no shortage
of water. Flush your john wrong, or go to bed squeaky clean, and you can be fined $2,500.

The only people who like this new regulation are Al's environmental
freaks, who long ago got used to smelling bad, and discovered they liked it. And the
federal regulators, of course.

The hero of the piece is Rep. Joe Knollenberg of Michigan, a Republican
with grit (the kind that won't wash off). Then a plumber, echoing the iron law of
economics that any master plumber can recite, told him there's already a thriving black
market in the old 3.5-gallon toilets.

Mr. Knollenberg introduced legislation last summer to eliminate any
regulation mandating toilet size. You might think that here's a bottom-line issue that not
even a Republican congressman would be frightened by. The Republicans could toilet-train
thousands of federal regulators to the applause of millions of relieved Americans.

But if you think that, you do not understand what bunny rabbits
Republicans can be. In fact, if you think that, you probably are not aware of a
little-known fact of human physiology -- a fact astonishing to first-year medical students
-- that Republicans often have such delicate constitutions that they only have to go to
the bathroom occasionally. Weeks go by that they do not have to expend even 1.6 gallons to
flush.

Nevertheless, Mr. Knollenberg was quickly invited to appear on radio talk
shows, which have become the coal-mine canaries of American politics, to talk about his
flush-rights legislation. When Mr. Knollenberg appeared on the radio program "Ask the
Handyman," which is broadcast widely in the Midwest, the host told his listeners to
call or write, in either e-mail or snail mail, to their congressmen. To nobody's surprise,
thousands did.

The congressman is definitely pro-choice in the matter of toilets:
"Let the marketplace decide and let consumers decide what they want to put in their
homes." He understands that if left to their own tastes the regulators would
eventually mandate a return to the two-hole design of the outdoor privies, so that every
American will have a regulator seated at his side to make sure that he doesn't flush
twice, just to make a point.

The Republican leadership is impressed by the response Mr. Knollenberg has
aroused, and promises quick action on his bill next year. Since what they want is his
response without necessarily exerting the effort he seeks, it's not at all clear that
Leader Lott, Professor Newt & Co. will actually stand up for the right to sit down in
peace. Bill Clinton, who once boasted (falsely, as it turned out) that he had only an
outdoor privy as a boy down in Arkansas, will probably steal this Republican issue, too.

The plumbing manufacturers want the federal regulation, and some of them
no doubt contributed money to Republican campaigns. The manufacturers don't necessarily
care about the water (recognizing it as a phony issue except in the West), but would have
to make several mandated toilet sizes if regulation is left to the individual states.
(Flush states' rights!) The bureaucrats and the environmentalists, full of it and
determined to stay that way, want the federal regulation because they think Americans
aren't capable of going to the bathroom by themselves.

One toilet-bowl lobbyist sees the future of the nation in peril if
Americans are allowed to flush as they please. Says Cecile Kremer of the Plumbing
Manufacturers Institute: "When you think about the future of our country and what we
are going to leave our kids, you wonder, why are we trying to turn back the hands of time
and flush good, fresh water down the toilet?"

The manufacturers insist that toilets are being downsized all over the
world, and Americans should adjust to the standards of the toy countries of Europe, where
inconvenience and inefficiency lend a certain ripeness to togetherness. Unlike the
congressman, they don't understand that that's why America happened here in the first
place.